I gulped. For all that I was cleaner than I had been, I was definitely still one of the grimiest. Sunny put her arm around me and yelled back, “Can’t the gate be damaged by smut?”
Mikhail frowned down at her. “What are they teaching you young Protectors these days? When a Great Sacrifice is made, the smut is burned away in the act itself.”
“That’s not how it works for me,” I muttered, remembering all the smut I’d taken on over the centuries. Mikhail’s eyes narrowed, and he shook his head slightly. He moved away, arguing with a Protector, and I felt Righteous’s eyes burning holes into me.
Before I knew what was happening, I was surrounded by Guides. I couldn’t see all their faces with their billowy hoods obscuring their features, but their scorn was obvious in their tone. “She must be an agent of the Abyss. Look at her.”
“Filthy, foul, repulsive. Sanctuary isn’t for souls like hers.”
“If her smut won’t taint the gate, I say we send her through, unmake her. She could be the reason it’s falling now.”
The group picked up on that idea and ran with it. Sunny’s arm went tighter around me as the crowd pressed in, and I saw someone struggling to get to us—Ry?
Then, behind me, Mikhail burst through the wall of sneering Guides, and the air filled with screams and flying feathers. “What are you doing to this Novice?” he demanded.
A voice sneered back, “A better question might be what haveyoubeen doing with her? But we can all tell. It’s taboo.”
Mikhail stopped next to me, but didn’t reach down to hold my hand. Didn’t touch me. He didn’t even look at me, like he was afraid to meet my eyes, and a dark flush was working its way up his bronzed neck. Was he embarrassed about what we’d done?Oh, shizz.He was.
He was ashamed of me.
Valor landed in front of me, his eyes flashing at Mikhail. “She’s already tainted you, High Angelus Mikhail. It’s obvious.” He waved at the smut that shadowed Mikhail’s face. “You’re a disgrace. What you’ve done... it’s perverse. Maybe you should be the one to sacrifice for the gate if your smut won’t harm it. Give us some real time to work out a solution.”
“Who’ll make the new Protectors then?” Sunny shouted, while Mikhail just stared gravely at the arrogant jerk. Like he was considering it. My heart thudded in my throat.
“There won’t be a need for more Protectors if the gate falls,” Valor replied, smirking. I really, really wanted to punch him in the mouth. “And Maker Mikhail is the one who allowed the Well of Souls to be sealed. He did whatever sent Arabella into her state. He should give more of himself since he’s the one who made the situation so much worse.”
A rusty laugh rang out at my side, and Mikhail extended his wings, forcing some of the Guides to back up. Valor stayed right in his face, though. “You think I haven’t given enough to Sanctuary?” Mikhail’s hands went to the belt of his robe, and he untied it slowly. “You believe I have balked at my duty? That after the Well was sealed, I rested?” His robe dropped to the ground, and he tore the simple white shirt straight down the middle with a twist of one hand. The fabric fluttered to the floor as he straightened, revealing his chest.
I’d felt the divots, the hundreds of scars, when we’d been together. I hadn’t thought they were ugly—nothing about Mikhail could be. But seeing them like this—laid out on display for these hypocrites who didn’t deserve to witness the sacrifices he’d made for each one of them—made me want to be sick. I heard a sound like retching from somewhere in the crowd, and a soft sob, and was glad at least some of these ungrateful jerks felt the same.
Sunny’s voice was choked with tears. “Maker Mikhail, what happened to you? Who did this?”
Folding his wings back, he looked down at her. “When the Well was closed, and the imbalance was made so much worse, we needed new Protectors more than ever. But Sanctuary didn’t have the power. I did.” He smiled gently when she gasped and put a finger on a deep scar by his second rib. “This was where I harvested your naming mark, sweet Sunny.”
She sobbed, turning to throw her arms around me, and I held her close. The room was silent, aghast.
Mikhail turned to the others, stretching his arms wide, revealing a torso littered with old and new scars, his skin so mottled that it looked more like bark than flesh. “I haven’t given enough? Hundreds of you have been carved from my flesh. Many of you truly are my children, inasmuch as Angeli can have them. If you decide that I need to give more—to sacrifice my whole self—I could do so. But be very certain. After I’m gone, there will be no more Protectors, no more Novices.” He sighed, his gaze on the crowd filled with disappointment and grief.
“Be very sure you want me to make that sacrifice for you, my family. I will meet you again at the Great Gate in the morning for you to share your decision.”
With that, he smiled softly at me, whispered for Sunny to take me back to my room, and gazed across the room at someone else, his eyes flashing. Then he leapt into the air, flying out of the room over the stunned gathering.
I crumpled to the floor, sobbing. No one besides Sunny comforted me, though when I looked up at last, my tears wrung out of me, Righteous stood silent guard over us both. He escorted us back to my room, his eyes troubled. Sunny fell asleep almost instantly, her hiccupping sobs continuing even in her dreams. Sanctuary quaked and shuddered in the darkness, as if it, too, was living through a nightmare.
I lay awake, thinking, until the incessant screaming from the gate forced my feet to move. In moments, I stood one corner away from the gate. I peeked quickly, noting that Hope was on guard there. She’d never let me near it. I changed course and tiptoed into Arabella’s room a few minutes later.
Her room was dimly lit as always, though most of the glow seemed to come from her. That was new. Mikhail had said his power was tied to Sanctuary’s somehow. Maybe when he took on my smut, Sanctuary got dimmer. I peered around the room, making sure we were alone, then climbed up next to her, wondering once more at how perfect she was.
“Mikhail told me how I got my name,” I said softly, letting my fingers trace a sweeping line over her brow. “I was supposed to be a part of you, did you know? Or… I guess I wasn’t. I was a mistake. A scrap, that he couldn’t find a place for. That’s what he named me, though he swears it was an accident, that he didn’t know the name would stick. I was supposed to be unmade way back then. Instead I’m Nothing, a Useless Scrap of the Beautiful One.” I laughed humorlessly. “Where would I have gone, do you think? If there had been a place for me on you, or if he had forced it. Bigger boobs? Longer hair? Fingernails, probably. Something not super useful.”
I sighed, and the room itself seemed to sigh with me. I entwined my fingers with hers, wondering at how warm they felt, even in the cool night air. “I had a sister on Earth, four hundred years ago. Dina. When Azazel threw me away, I guess I ended up there. That’s why I was lost. I was never supposed to exist. No one even knew I was down there. No one loved me, until I came here.” I was about to tell her about Sunny, when a voice that brought memories of pain intruded.
“He can’t truly love you,” Gavriel said in a low voice, stepping out of the shadows.
“W-what?” I sat up, scooting away from Arabella, with a quick glance to make sure I hadn’t messed up her hair or robe. “What are you talking about?”
He took another step into the room, his lip curled in a strange shape. He looked like a lost man, grief and pain oozing from his gaze. The shadows that fell from him as he approached me were hideously warped and long, almost like the ones that I would see in my moments of choosing on Earth.
